Hello everyone,

Tl;dr: I want more loving touch without whining for it.

I understand if this seems trivial, but it's a big deal to me so here goes.

My love language is touch. And I'm needy.

Before we had kids, we had much more leisure time and sex was often slow and paired with cuddling and massages right until the next session. Now we have 2, and sex is always quickies.

The baby only reliably sleeps at night (in the day she wakes a lot for a pacifier/nursing/to be carried). The older kid can easily be distracted with a book or a video, but baby can't. So night is our only private time. I can't give baby to a sitter for longer periods - I'm nursing and prone to mastitis, so pumping breastmilk, apart from being a total passion killer, is something I avoid at all costs.

Come evening, husband and I are both so tired that we're irritable. We emigrated just 2 months ago, and the baby is nearly 3 months - lots of paperwork still needs doing, we're quite sleep deprived and I'm still hormonal. My husband also has an intense job (self-employed consultant, currently juggling multiple projects where lots of money is involved). It's a rough period for all of us.

That leaves precious little time for loving touch, and I don't automatically get it as an extension of our sex life.

During a similar rough period with our firstborn, the lack of loving touch became too much for me. I kind of desperately begged for a massage, and my husband didn't give me one - he booked me one. Now I love love love massages, and that's really not something to complain about, right? So I didn't. I've gotten more of those, since. Really lovely.

But it doesn't solve the problem - I want loving touch from him. No masseuse can fix that. If I say that I want him to do it, he suffers from sudden fatigue, or he will do it for 3 minutes.

Now a frequent 3 minute massage from my loving husband - sign me up!

Only there's another problem. I don't recognize/realise that I haven't been getting my touch-needs met until it's at a point where I feel horrible. And then when I suddenly realise, it's like I'm behind, I need to catch up. So I tell him in a needy whiny desperate way. And I get super anxious when he even starts to touch me, for fear he will stop. And he gets annoyed with me, because his touch seems to have the opposite effect. And we have all this friction and for a while he will be more touchy feely for me, because he's a darling, and I'll relax, and then life happens and we forget about it. And then...

I have gotten to that point again. Pushing out a baby, moving houses, carrying baby everywhere, no sleep, and only quickies. My body is literally hurting every night from overexertion. We haven't cuddled on the couch to watch a movie together in forever. If he has a moment to himself, he plays games on his phone. He roughhouses with the kid, but that's way too risky for me to get involved (they're too wild for me). I'm aching for loving touch.

My husbands love language is words of affirmation. Remember where I said we're irritable at night? I'm sure that if I try to talk to him about this tonight, it will just cause drama. My tone will be all wrong, he will feel criticised, and I might get a grudging hug out of it, but I won't get the deeper need filled: to feel loved. And I'm afraid I will just cry that it's not enough. I know, rationally, that he loves me. He shows it in a lot of other ways. But I really don't feel it, and it's been giving me crying spells.

And my brain is mush from the lack of sleep. How and when do I talk about this? I know if I go about this the right way, he'll be happy to make the effort. But if I don't think of a good way, I'll just start crying at him tonight and drama drama.

Help?